Interstellar Conditions?

Astrobiologists have "simulated"
interstellar conditions. Here is what they believed happened in space.
Purified metals became cooled to 15°K while mixtures of room temperature
gases were shot at those metals. During this time, the gases frozen on the
metals were bombarded with narrow wavelength ultraviolet light (no other
frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum were emitted by this unusual
interstellar object (no gamma, x-ray or heat). Every two days, however,
this miraculous interstellar object produced enough heat to warm the
metals to room temperature (no higher, of course). Then heat production
suddenly ceased as the temperature dropped back to 15°K
as more UV radiation was produced. This remarkable interstellar object
then continued on these alternating cycles for 5 weeks. Even more
remarkable was the sudden production of chloroform:methanol directed at
the metal bar, dissolving the organic molecules, then shooting out a
purified burst of dry nitrogen gas (at room temperature) to dry the
solvent. The interstellar object then randomly assembled itself into a
high pressure liquid chromatography column (complete with injectors,
column packing, and detectors) to separate the material into fractions. At
this time, the interstellar object crashed into the newly formed earth and
landed, believe it or not, into a pool of 5 mM phosphate buffer. The end
result was a fully functional cell (oops!) a
functional biological membrane (oops!) some oily blobs (yes!) in
the pool. And that is how life began on earth!

Rich Deem

Introduction

Many news sites have played up the idea that NASA scientists have made
objects similar to cell membranes. As one site says, "They have succeeded
in creating cell-like structures spontaneously from simple chemical ices in
conditions that simulate the frigid vacuum of deep space."1
Is this claim really true? Let's look at the original article and see if it
measures up to the claim.

A recent article, "Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in
simulated interstellar/precometary ices" (authors Jason P. Dworkin, David
W. Deamer, Scott A. Sandford, and Louis J. Allamandola, edited by Stanley
Miller) claims to show that organic molecules can be formed under interstellar
conditions in "molecular clouds" and that these organic mixtures can
form "membranous vesicles" similar to lipid bilayer membranes found in
living cells. The article was published in the non-peer-reviewed journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).2 It
is unlikely that the article would have passed peer-review, as you will soon see
from this review.

Right mixtures of gases?

The study began by using a gas mixture of water, methane, ammonia and carbon
monoxide, which the authors claim are the prevalent gases found in interstellar
clouds. However, these clouds are also known to contain significant amounts of
carbon dioxide, which was not included in their mixture. Why this gas was left
out and whether this omission would have any effect upon the resulting molecules
was not discussed in the paper. The concentration of the gases was also not
mentioned in the methods, but was likely to be much higher than that which is
observed in real interstellar clouds.

Purified metals in space?

The gases were deposited under vacuum onto a rotating nickel, aluminum, or
brass substrate, cooled to 15°K (the approximate temperature of interstellar
space). Are these the conditions that one would expect to find in interstellar
space? First, rotating purified nickel, aluminum or brass is not available in
space. They would have done better to use mixtures of metals similar to those
found in meteorites. The other unrealistic condition is that the gases (at room
temperature, most likely) were directed at the pre-cooled metals, so that they
would be frozen and concentrated beyond anything possible in interstellar space.
In interstellar space, everything is cold and any frozen gases would not be
expected to get concentrated on any solid substrate in this manner, except under
extremely rare conditions, none of which I can think of at the moment.

Monochromatic UV is space?

Next, the concentrated, iced gases were irradiated with an extremely high
level of ultraviolet radiation (1015 photons/sec). What is
unrealistic about this scenario is that there would never be a radiation source
in interstellar space that produced radiation in the narrow wavelengths (121 nm
and 161 nm) produced by the hydrogen discharge lamp used in this study. Any
source of radiation produced in space would have to come from some stellar or
nebular object, all of which produce much larger amounts of radiation in the
non-ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The much higher energy
radiation (gamma and x-rays) would be expected to be present, which would likely
undo most, if not all of the effects the UV had upon molecules formed from the
gases. In order to get a dose equivalent to that used in the study, there would
also have to be large amounts of heat produced from the source, which would melt
the ices and produce gas clouds. The basic premise that the conditions used in
this study exist anywhere in this universe is flawed.

Cycles of warming in space?

Believe it or not, things actually go downhill from here. In order to get the
organic molecules, the gases were simultaneously deposited (at 15°K) and
irradiated with the high dose UV for two days. After this time, the ice was
slowly warmed to room temperature under static vacuum. Then the process was
repeated (deposition at 15°K and simultaneous high dose UV for two days
followed by warming) cyclically for a period of 5 weeks. What kind of
interstellar object would produce this kind of cycle was not discussed in the
article.

A single cycle experiment ("continuous photolysis and deposition for 4-7
days") was attempted (probably first), which "produce similar samples
but with lower yields." Obviously, the yields were so much lower that the
method could not be used to collect material for the remainder of the study,
since the authors never demonstrated that the products were actually
"similar samples".

Purified solvents in space?

The material was then eluted from the metal substrate with purified
chloroform-methanol (not usually found in outer space), dried under flowing dry
nitrogen (also not found in outer space) and redissolved in chloroform-methanol.
Next, the dissolved mixture was separated by high pressure liquid chromatography
(HPLC) columns (not usually found around stellar objects, excluding the Sun)
into component chemicals. The fractions from the column were added to phosphate
buffered water (at alkaline pH). The amount of phosphate and pH of the buffer
would almost certainly not be present on the earth at any time in its past. In
fact, the phosphate problem is a serious one for those who postulate that
Structural components, or building blocks, of DNA and RNA. Nucleotides consists of a base plus a molecule of sugar and one of phosphate.nucleotides were formed on the early earth. Some of the HPLC-purified components
of the organic mixture formed "water-insoluble droplets with different
morphologies."

Oil and water don't mix

The authors conclude that the produced organic mixture, "show lipid-like
behavior and self organize into droplets on exposure to liquid water suggest
that extraterrestrial materials could exhibit a far greater range in chemical
properties and behavior than previously thought." Of course, it would be
expected that any long carbon chain molecules would form droplets in the
presence of water. This is not "self organization" but merely a
property of organic and aqueous mixtures (like the old saying, "oil and
water don't mix"). Organic mixtures must form droplets in the presence of
water, since the energy keeping such "structures" together is less
than that required to separate the hydrophobic parts of the molecules from the
aqueous components. Therefore, none of this requires any kind of "self
assembly." The authors failed to demonstrate that these "membranous
vesicles" actually had any properties in common with biological membranes.
Real membranes must have the capacity to selectively include and exclude salts
and organic molecules and selectively transport other such molecules. Without
these abilities, these "membranous vesicles" would be completely
worthless to house any kind of cellular machinery.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the study demonstrates incredible audacity to make the claim
that biological membrane-like vesicles have been produced in conditions
mimicking interstellar space. This review demonstrates that this claim is
absurd, and that no place in the universe would ever exhibit the conditions
found in the methods used to produce the organic mixture synthesized in this
study. In addition, the purification of the mixture through multiple artificial
steps could never be reproduced in the universe except by intelligent beings in
a laboratory on earth. The incredible lengths to which non-believers will go to
avoid the conclusion that life must have been formed by an intelligent Being are
quite spectacular. This blindness to rational critique seems to extend to the
entire prebiotic life/astrobiology community, which seems to be unable to
critically evaluate the irrationality of its "scientific" studies.

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Origins of Life:
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scientific argument against atheism is the problem with a naturalistic origin of
life. This very problem led me to become a deist as a biology major at USC in
the early 1970's. The problems for atheists have gotten no better since that
time. In fact, the last 30+ years of research have turned up even more problems
than those that existed when I first studied the theories. Fuz Rana (a
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naturalistic models to help the reader decide which one fits the data
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